Teachers and Summers!

Photograph by Erika Munz

By Erika Munz
-Dedicated to my dear friend Monica Coash; a teacher who never had a summer off and who was my loudest cheerleader in all endeavors. 

     I’ve been a telemarketer, a stage manager/technician, a preschool teacher, an auditory training technician, and a department store cashier.  (Among other jobs my fifty-five year old brain refuses to acknowledge.)  My favorite was the substitute preschool teaching position, even when the two-year olds whined for their Miss Nancy to return.  (Apparently preschoolers have an aversion to walking in single file.)  All experiences I would have missed if I hadn’t become a teacher and had summers off.  As I sat in my third training this summer,
I thought about all the summers of my twenty-nine years of teaching.  Every teacher has heard the phrase, “Oh, it must be so nice to have summers off,” and Facebook is full of sarcastic memes on the subject.  We teachers are always feeling the need to apologize or explain our summers off.  Whenever teachers try to fight for increases in salary or benefits, we are met with, “But you have summers off.”  I find that interesting because this entire summer, whenever I have tried to schedule appointments or speak with banks, insurance companies, etc., the human I need to speak with is always on vacation or “Out of the Office until…” It occurred to me that many companies offer more than the two weeks of vacation, especially if you have been working at a company for twenty-nine years.  So perhaps, teaching isn’t the only profession with summers off.

     According to Jessica Yang at Salary.com, the average number of paid days off an employee of fifteen years receives, in the United States, is twenty-seven days.  In terms of weekdays, that is more than five weeks.  Yang didn’t distinguish between degreed and non-degreed employees.  The United States Department of Labor reports the average for degreed professionals of twenty-five years, in the United States, is 8.5 paid sick leave days, 8.5 paid holidays and 17.8 vacation days.  I know many professionals employed at government facilities in my state, work only three more weeks than I do in a year.  I would give up three weeks for four times my salary; I think anyone would. 

     Because I am a frustrated archaeologist, and I will be teaching a subject I haven’t taught in three years, this summer I decided to take three unpaid days of training in teaching archaeology to students.  This training included a free curriculum, something no teacher can resist.  Last week I attended two days of unpaid training to use a piece of technology I have used for the last three years, only because I needed to prove I had the training in order to keep it.  Teaching is not the only profession with useless trainings and mandates, it is just one of the few professions in which you are required to perform duties, outside your paid duty day.  This doesn’t include the hours I have spent researching and compiling lessons for the upcoming year.  One week before I am officially required to return to work, I will be in my new classroom, (with windows;) moving furniture, cleaning, and unpacking twenty-nine years of teaching.  Posters will be posted, signs laminated, and parent letters composed, all during my last week of my summer off.  Most teachers, especially those who are single or single parents, work tirelessly as an educator, while working part-time jobs and then full time jobs during summers off.   So the next time you think to ask a teacher what they will be doing with their summer off?  Don’t!